"According to legendary house and disco DJ Danny Krivit, in the early 80s around 4,000 licenses were issued for nightclubs in New York City. In 2016, this number had fallen to around 120. The decline of New York club culture is a wearingly familiar refrain, chalked up to gentrification, the club-killing policies of Rudolph Giuliani during his 1994-2001 mayoral tenure, or smartphones replacing dancefloors as the primary focus and obsession of young people’s lives. Yet the New York nightclub isn’t finished yet, and in these times of political despair could be due a renaissance. Tim Lawrence’s new book Life and Death on the New York Dance Floor, 1980-1983 reminds us that nightclubs can be generative spaces of art, community, cross-cultural pollination, experimentation, and pockets of resistance to the oppression of the daytime world."

Alex generously concludes:

"Lawrence’s three books are widely renowned to be as accurate a depiction as we’re likely to get of that moment in time. More importantly, they serve as a call to arms to those of us who still believe that nightclubs are important, a place where you can find your people and open your mind to new possibilities."